EUROlinkCAT is a project funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

It will last for five years (2017-2021) and will bring together different sources of information about the lives of children born with congenital anomalies (also known as birth defects).

This project will involve children born from 1995 to 2014 up until 10 years of age.

The dissemination of this work will be led by Dr. Amanda Neville (Ferrara, Italy), Professor Anna Latos-Bielenska (Poznan, Poland) and Professor Ingeborg Barisic (Zagreb, Croatia).

What are we doing?

EUROlinkCAT will use the 22 EUROCAT registries present in 14 European countries (containing a total of 200,000 births) to expand the knowledge of the survival, health and clinical care of children with congenital anomalies. We will study factors involved in the disease, how children with a congenital anomaly are getting on at school and if they have any unmet needs.

Who is our audience?

Our focus is to target information in appropriate ways to different people interested in this project. We plan to provide information to parents of affected children, interested individuals and caregivers as well as Public Health and Education Policy units, health professionals and scientists.

How do we communicate?

We recognize that a wide range of dissemination methods are needed given the variety of people that will be interested in EUROlinkCAT.

As well as through scientific publications and conference presentations, we will spread information through our website, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and a sustainable e-forum, “ConnectEpeople”, open to everyone.

We are planning a scientific conference to share our results at the end of the project in 2021.

We have also printed a leaflet about our project which we are distributing at meetings.

Results from our study will be placed on the “ConnectEpeople” forum up until 2021 and our partners will be communicating results to their local network in their native language.